Hand Pumps and Access To Clean Water
In November 2002, the United Nations Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights asserted that access to clean, safe water goes beyond the classification of water as an economic commodity. The committee stressed the fundamental right of sufficient access to clean water for both domestic and personal use. “The human right to water is indispensable for leading a life in human dignity.” With this in mind, manufacturers of water pumps, like those produced by GOAZ Development in Malaysia, have a wide range of potential customers: governments, non- governmental organizations, women’s groups, community groups and other organizations of various types interested to developing access to groundwater.
However, there is controversy surrounding the sustainability of hand pumps, and the long-term gains from investing in them. A number of difficulties are associated with the use of hand pumps: these include cost, hygiene, maintenance, availability of spare parts, responsibility of upkeep, community involvement, technology, organization and education. Hand pumps, battered by intense use and conditions in rural areas, have often fallen apart. In addition, unobtainable spare parts impede maintenance.
Read more about this topic: Hand Pump
Famous quotes containing the words hand, pumps, access, clean and/or water:
“Oh! I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings ...
And while with silent lifting mind I’ve trod
The high, untrespassed sanctity of space,
Put out my hand and touched the face of God.”
—John Gillespie Magee (c. 1922–1941)
“the rusty
Pump pumps over your sweating face the clear
Water, cold, so cold! you cup your hands
And gulp from them the dailiness of life.”
—Randall Jarrell (1914–1965)
“The nature of women’s oppression is unique: women are oppressed as women, regardless of class or race; some women have access to significant wealth, but that wealth does not signify power; women are to be found everywhere, but own or control no appreciable territory; women live with those who oppress them, sleep with them, have their children—we are tangled, hopelessly it seems, in the gut of the machinery and way of life which is ruinous to us.”
—Andrea Dworkin (b. 1946)
“A soul that makes virtue its companion is like an over-flowing well, for it is clean and pellucid, sweet and wholesome, open to all, rich, blameless and indestructible.”
—Epictetus (c. 50–120)
“Lord, crack their teeth! Lord, crush these lions’ jaws!
So let them sink as water in the sand;
When deadly bow their aiming fury draws,
Shiver the shaft ere past the shooter’s hand.
So make them melt as the dishoused snail”
—Bible: Hebrew Psalm LVIII (Paraphrased by the Countess of Pembroke)